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What is a Sprint?

2:26 with Matt Anthes-Washburn

The Sprint is the basic unit of work for a Scrum team, and it may be the feature of Scrum that most differentiates it from other Agile models. A sprint is a single iteration carried out by a team.

Terms

Sprint Product: The outcome of a sprint is “potentially shippable product,” or working software that has the potential to be shipped to the customer.
Time Box: Once begun, the team is committed to spending exactly the allotted time on the sprint.
Cadence: When team has a consistent sprint length, they develop a rhythm or cadence to their work.

The sprint is the basic unit of work for a Scrum team. 0:00
And it may be the feature of Scrum that most differentiates it 0:03
from other agile models. 0:07
A sprint is a single iteration carried out by a team. 0:09
A team may complete several sprints on its way to preparing a release of software. 0:12
A sprint starts with a team committing to work to be done, and 0:17
ends with a demonstration of potentially shippable product. 0:21
While many details on a backlog item may be figured out before the team 0:25
enters a sprint, most of the work to develop and 0:29
test the feature happens within the sprint. 0:32
If you ask me to name a single feature of the sprint that is fundamental to its 0:35
success, I'd say it's when a team commits to the work to be done within the sprint. 0:39
One of the things I've learned while teaching, 0:44
is that learners are motivated and feel effective, 0:46
when they are empowered to make choices about the work they commit to. 0:49
In Scrum, the team meets for planning at the beginning of the sprint. 0:53
And, the development team members make estimates on the effort of each item. 0:57
They reach consensus on how many items they can commit to. 1:01
We'll learn more about the sprint planning event later in the course. 1:04
The length of a sprint is no longer than one month, and 1:08
it is sometimes referred to as a time box. 1:12
This means that the team is agreed. 1:15
That the sprint can't grow beyond this time limit and 1:17
everyone is committed to completing the sprint within the arrange time box. 1:20
I've worked on teams with two week and three week cycles and 1:25
I've even talked to teams that run a new sprint every week. 1:28
Each sprint typically has the same duration, 1:32
which allows the team to form a rhythm or cadence to their work. 1:34
A new sprint begins immediately after the previous sprint is completed. 1:37
A cadence helps to keep the team's momentum going and 1:42
provides a predictable pattern to the work. 1:45
The term "potentially shippable product" 1:47
is one you will hear a lot when discussing a sprint. 1:50
This is because, as declared in the agile manifesto, 1:54
we value working software over comprehensive documentation. 1:57
The idea here is that at the end of each sprint, 2:01
we will have software that has been designed, built, and tested. 2:04
The team has an agreed upon definition of done, 2:09
which you will learn about later in the course. 2:12
The sprint product may be used internally, within the organization, or 2:14
may be shipped to the customer. 2:18
Either way, the team stands behind its sprint product, and 2:20
delivers value to the organization. 2:24

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